Domain authority is a metric created by the SEO company Moz which calculates the probability, on a scale of 1 to 100, of your website appearing among the first Google search results; the infamous “SERPs”. But make no mistake: this index does not affect your ranking. Instead, it monitors the effectiveness of your SEO strategies, especially link building, in order to calculate the score.
Do you need to get to 100 on the Domain Authority scale? No, and that shouldn’t even be the goal, since the websites that hit this milestone are giants like Facebook, Amazon and Wikipedia. The goal here is to outscore your competitors.
How do we calculate domain authority range?
Domain authority calculations are made possible thanks to machine learning technology, which compiles a range of data from your website, such as the total number of backlinks, to see how often Google is promoting your domain in its search results.
To clarify, let’s posit two websites, A and B. Upon analysis, we can see that the first domain appears much more often in searches than the second. Therefore, it is assumed that the former has a higher domain authority.
How can this score be increased?
Having a good domain authority metric does not influence the ranking of your website in the Search Engine Results Page, but this information can be used as a KPI to diagnose the results of your digital marketing strategies and guide you towards the best path: staying the course, or changing your plans.
If you value this knowledge, here are some tips to increase your domain authority:
- Identify your competitors and make sure you are comparing yourself with the right companies – those which rank with the keywords of greatest strategic relevance for your business;
- Create relevant content, containing links to your website, to be published on other websites, especially those that are well positioned on results pages. When content is high-quality and comprehensive, it is often mentioned in several articles, even on competing domains. The tactic here is to strengthen your website’s external linking and increase your domain authority;
- Create internal links too, referencing content you’ve already published that complements the latest material;
- Always check if the pages referring to these links are working correctly, as their performance is a factor that not only interferes with the calculation, but also with positioning on Google.
- Don’t aim for excellent page authority on every page of your website – it’s normal for some pages to fall short. The important thing is to eliminate possible spam links; just like error pages, these affect the calculation and ranking;
- In addition to maintaining a presence on authoritative sites, these vehicles should also generate traffic towards your domain. Just like on social networks, there is no point in having a large number of views if there is no engagement or interest on the part of your followers. So make sure to consider content that makes sense in the context of the topics covered, and the audience of these other websites.
If you’ve made it this far, you may have realized that domain authority is much more of a comparative metric than an absolute one, so we don’t recommend taking it out of context.
Finally, even if it is not considered by Google as a ranking factor, the score works as a trusted barometer for your digital marketing actions.
